social influence: conformity Flashcards
What was the purpose of Solomon Asch’s baseline procedure?
To assess the extent to which people will conform to the opinion of others in an unambiguous situation
In Asch’s baseline study, how many confederates were varied?
From one to 15, resulting in total group sizes from two to 16
What relationship did Asch find between group size and conformity rate?
A curvilinear relationship where conformity increased with group size but leveled off after three confederates
At what point did conformity to the wrong answer rise to 31.8%?
With three confederates
What effect did the presence of a non-conforming person have on a naïve participant’s conformity?
It decreased conformity to less than a quarter of the level when the majority was unanimous
What is the significance of a dissenter in Asch’s experiments?
It appears to free the naïve participant to behave more independently
How does the presence of a dissenter affect conformity when they disagree with the genuine participant?
Non-conformity is still likely even if the dissenter disagrees with the genuine participant
What did Asch investigate regarding task difficulty?
Whether making the task harder would affect the degree of conformity
How did Asch make the line-judging task harder?
By making the stimulus line and the comparison lines more similar in length
What was the result of increasing task difficulty in Asch’s study?
Conformity increased due to greater ambiguity in the task
What is informational social influence (ISI)?
The tendency to look to others for guidance when the correct answer is unclear
What is one limitation of Asch’s research regarding the task and situation?
The task and situation were artificial, and participants knew they were in a research study, which may have influenced their behavior.
This is related to demand characteristics, where participants act according to expectations.
What was the nature of the task that participants had to perform in Asch’s study?
is this a strength or limitation?
The task of identifying lines was relatively trivial, providing little reason not to conform.
A limitation: artificial situation & task
This triviality may have affected the level of conformity observed.
According to Susan Fiske (2014), how did Asch’s groups differ from real-world groups?
Asch’s groups were not very ‘groupy’ and did not resemble groups experienced in everyday life.
This limits the generalizability of the findings to real-world situations.
What demographic was primarily represented in Asch’s study?
Asch’s participants were primarily American men.
This raises questions about the applicability of the findings to women and individuals from different cultures.
What does research suggest about women’s conformity compared to men’s?
Other research suggests that women may be more conformist due to concerns about social relationships and acceptance.
This was mentioned by Neto (1995).
How do individualist and collectivist cultures differ in terms of conformity rates?
Collectivist cultures, like China, tend to have higher conformity rates than individualist cultures, like the US.
This difference highlights cultural influences on conformity.
What support did Asch’s research receive regarding task difficulty?
Other studies, like Todd Lucas et al. (2006), found that participants conformed more often on harder tasks.
This supports Asch’s claim about task difficulty affecting conformity.
What did Lucas et al.’s study reveal about individual confidence and conformity?
Participants with high confidence in their maths abilities conformed less on hard tasks than those with low confidence.
This indicates that individual-level factors can influence conformity.
Fill in the blank: Asch’s findings tell us little about conformity in _______.
women and people from some cultures.
True or False: Asch researched the roles of individual factors in conformity.
False.
Asch did not investigate individual factors that might influence conformity.
